


but i'm only human

by tsuluio



Series: the oc universe [3]
Category: Splatoon
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Explicit Language, Family Dynamics, Gen, Graphic Violence, Trauma, salmonid invasion things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuluio/pseuds/tsuluio
Summary: They said the Salmonids weren't going to attack. They were wrong.
Relationships: Chase (OC) & Elliot (OC), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: the oc universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604218
Kudos: 3





	but i'm only human

**Author's Note:**

> ooog i need to stop posting about my ocs oh no

"Chase!"

Elia's screech echoes through the house and Chase responds with a barely concealed groan, shuffling to push his pillow over his head. That doesn't deter his younger sister, however, and she bounds into his room, hopping on top of him.

"Chase, stop pretending to be asleep and come downstairs! Dad and Mom are leaving, an' don't want you to miss saying bye to them!"

"Why can't they just leave without waking me up?" Chase grumbles from beneath the pillow, though he's careful to make sure Elia doesn't hear him.

He removes the pillow from his head and sighs. "I'll be right there, gimme a few minutes, okay?"

Elia nods and scampers out of the room. As soon as the door shuts, Chase falls back onto the bed, feeling it sink under his weight. His parents work as supervisors to the to the village’s defense systems, and although there hasn’t been a Salmonid raid in centuries, the village still liked to keep precautions. Poor precautions, as Chase’s other younger sister, Marley, would say.

Chase has no opinion on his parents’ jobs, nor does he really care. He wouldn’t be here for much longer anyway. He’s fourteen, the age where he could legally move to Inkopolis and get a turfing license. The crimson Inkling fully intends to go to Inkopolis; after all, his best friend lives there, and he’s been waiting for this ever since Lillian went off on her own.

It takes him maybe two minutes to pull on a jacket and venture downstairs. His parents are waiting for him at the door, their own coats slung over their shoulders. His father turns to him with a wide smile, leading his wife to follow.

“Ah, Chase, you’re awake!”

Chase forces a smile. “Yeah, I am now.”

“Be a bit nicer, Chase,” his mother chides him. “We’ll probably be gone for the entire day,” she adds apologetically. “Duty calls!”

Marley, a few feet away, snickers at the word “duty” and Chase cracks a smile. “Alright, Mom, whatever you say.”

She laughs and ruffles his tentacles, leading to a childish whine from the other and a frantic scramble to fix whatever motherly love had done to his already messy head. “Be back soon! Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

The door slams shut.

All three siblings stare at the door before Elia cheers.

“All right! No parents again!”

“You do know that if they left all the time, we would be in serious danger, right?” Marley asks, and her younger sister pouts at her.

“Aw, c’mon Marls, you sound like Lily!”

Marley rolls her eyes and Elia sticks her tongue out. “You’re too young to understand.”

“And you’re only twelve,” Elia retorts. “Chase probably likes it when Mom and Dad leave, and he’s fourteen.”

Both sisters turn to look at Chase. He shrugs once. “I guess. I’m gonna go brush my teeth,” he continues as an afterthought before leaving the girls in the living room. He can hear them arguing as he heads back upstairs.

“See, he doesn’t like it because he understands--”

“No, he’s just tired ‘cause I had to wake him up--”

Chase slams his bedroom door shut behind him, effectively silencing them.

He would like it when his parents leave, as it’s only logical that when the adults leave, the kids party. But with his parents being called out for defense reasons more and more, he’s taken on a role he’s pretty sure no other fourteen-year-old would have to do: take care of his sisters. Technically they’re old enough to take care of themselves, but Chase is the oldest in the house now, now that Lillian left, and he’s in charge.

Lillian had confronted him about it before she left, eyes shining green in the darkness. “You do know you’ll have to take charge a lot more when Mom and Dad leave, right?”

He had nodded then, mind in other places, and she had just snorted and shook her head. “No, you don’t,” she answered herself, and Chase grimaced at her.

“Yeah, I do.”

Lillian had only stared at him in response and he found himself silenced of his own volition, forced to change his mind. “I mean, I don’t.”

“That’s what I thought. You’re a moron, Chase, for thinking that being in charge is all just fun and games.”

“That’s not what I--”

“It is, and both of us know it.” Lillian’s voice drops in pitch and he has to lean in to hear her, something he hates doing because anything in proximity to Lillian only reminds him of how much he’s not like her. “Well, it’s not, and you’re about to learn that soon enough.”

Chase had glared at her then -- oh how he hated her -- and turned away. “I’ll manage.”

The last thing he ever heard from her was a short quiet burst of laughter before she murmurs, “Yeah, I’m sure you will.”

And then she had left for Inkopolis.

Chase had learned alright. His sisters are a handful, and while he loves them, he can’t manage them all the time. He learns to cook, to clean, to wash clothes, to do everything he realizes now Lillian had to do while she was still in the house.

He remembers now why she left.

But she made it look so easy the way she swiftly folded clothes, made her quick and clean strokes when drying dishes, and kept her room clean almost as a second instinct. And it was just another reminder to Chase why she was better to him, why the villagers murmured things about how that poor confident, stuck-up boy was going to learn just what it meant to take responsibility.

So he learned, and here he was, stuck monitoring his sisters as his parents went out to protect the city from the most likely non-existent Salmonids.

The water is ice-cold and wakes him up a little more at least. He splashes some on his face before heading back downstairs. Marley has taken up making breakfast, thank  _ cod _ because Chase already had to make both lunch and dinner as well as do most of the housework around the place.

"Hiya, Chase!" Elia greets him like she hasn't seen him in years and he offers her a half-assed grin before taking his plate from Marley.

"You know Mom's gonna get mad if she knows you don't even eat at the table with us," she reminds him, and Chase just shakes his head before moving towards the kitchen hallway. 

"Whatever. Just don't bother me for today--"

The entire building shakes suddenly and Chase stops speaking. His sisters look just as confused, and all of them exchange glances. Was it an earthquake?

"What was that?" Elia speaks for all of them, and Chase glances towards the door uneasily.

"Probably nothing," he says. Both girls relax, though Marley still looks on edge.

"Okay, but if--"

The building shakes again, a severe pounding echoing on the front door, and Elia jumps up, darting to the living room window. "Someone's outside!"

"Salmonids!" Marley gasps as she looks out the window as well and Chase manages to pull both sisters away as the glass in front of them shatters.

Fish armed with frying pans and spoons spill into the living room, high pitched screeches piercing the air. Elia screams and scrambles backwards; Marley grabs a frying pan of her own and whacks the nearest Salmonids, sending it flying. But where it disappeared into the sea of its brethren, twenty more appeared. 

"What do we do?" Elia screams as a Small Fry grabs at her ankles; she kicks it in the face and sends it into the stove. It then proceeds to knock back the dials and send a flame spiraling into existence. Chase manages to climb onto a chair and grabs Marley under the arms, hauling her above the swarming mass of fish.

"Stay calm," Chase shouts above the noise. "Maybe Mom and Dad will come."

Marley shakes her head, eyes wide and teary. "They're probably gone," she says. "If the Salmonids made it this far without any warning alarms going up, they were caught off guard. They're probably d--"

"No!" Elia shrieks. "They're not dead, just--"

A gigantic Cohock slams in through the back walls and knocks her off the table. She falls into the mosh pit of Salmonids, which latch onto her immediately. Her screams of pain fade away horrifically quickly and Chase readies himself to jump in to help her.

"Chase!" Marley yells in his ear. "You can't save her!"

He turns in blind panic to his younger sister, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Her face is already wet, voice twisted into a determined sob. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we can't save her, Chase! She's gone!"

"She can't--" He looks at the swarm beneath them again. There was no way that Elia could've survived that. She wasn't even visible between the sea of fish, just a mass of blue--

Blue. Blue blood.

Bile rises in his throat and he vomits, the nearest Salmonids catching flecks of the substance on their fins. She's  _ gone _ . She's  _ dead _ . And it all happened so quickly, Chase couldn't do  _ anything _ to help her.

She's only eleven, only a  _ kid _ . And now she's not coming back.

Marley shakes him hard, snapping him out of his grief-stricken trance. "Chase! Snap outta it! We need to defend ourselves!" She leaps onto the half-shredded table, the Cohock responsible now caught in the flame of the lit stove, spreading it to the nearby Salmonids and surrounding walls. The entire house is burning down around them, yet all Chase can feel is overwhelming guilt.

He's the oldest now, the one who needs to help his sisters, take care of them. And now Elia is dead. If Lillian were here, the Salmonids would be gone and they'd all be safe, hidden away. If Lillian were here--

He's not Lillian. He never will be. He's simply the replacement for her, the one in charge until the actual responsible, good child comes back.

But she'll come back to one of her sisters dead, her house in ruins, and--

Marley has somehow found a rake in the coddamned  _ kitchen _ , fending off the horde of fish on her own. Chase is still stuck staring down at Elia's remains.

A Cohock's frying pan catches him in the chest and he staggers backwards. He sees a Stinger rising into the burning horizon and he's barely aware of Marley a few feet away, swinging wildly with her rake.

The Stinger clicks and aims directly at his sister and Chase swallows the guilt and the pain tearing through his lungs and shoves Marley aside, sending her into one of the few standing walls of the house. There's a loud crash as the wall topples over and crushes at least ten Salmonids. Marley scrambles on top of it as the Stinger releases its charge, ripping through Chase's legs.

The pain doesn't hit until several moments later. It feels like millions of wiggling snakes with teeth of glasses are eating at his knees, his shins, his feet. He hears Marley scream his name as his vision wavers. The Cohock charges him again and catches him in the eye as he's trying to stand.

The force of the blow sends him reeling sideways, landing in a pool of his own blood. Something catches his left arm and clenches painfully shut, metal sharp objects tearing through his jacket sleeve and his skin, blue liquid seeping through the remaining shreds of his jacket, excruciating pain erupting like fire along his elbow and shoulder, sending ripples of agony down his back. He collapses again, a frying pan jabbing hard into one ear as darkness swims through his gaze. He tastes blood as something green circles around him, a fishing lure bobbing directly beneath him. He has only a second before a gigantic fish bursts from the ground, teeth closing over his body. 

The slithering noises around him fade away, though he isn't sure if they've left or if he's losing it.

It hurts. It hurts so much. And yet, as he's laying there, watching the sun set over the bloody water, he feels the urge to laugh. There hasn't been an attack in  _ centuries _ , they said. There was no way Salmonids could attack now, they said.

But here they are now, Chase thinks, before the sky, the sea, and the burning ruins around him turn black.

\--

Someone's saying his name. A hand grasps his arm, tugging him forward, and he wants to tell them that it hurts, that he wants them to stop, but the pain is too much that he passes out again

Little snippets of noise float through the air, and he reaches for them, struggling to pick out what's going on around him. He must be dead, he's sure, but someone's voice, familiar in the haze of waking up, tells him to open his eyes.

So he does.

\--

He hasn't seen Elliot in years. They made fast friends when they were about six years old, sticking together despite their wildly different personalities. Elliot was calm, reserved, and polite, even when faced with things a normal person would lose themselves at, and Chase as loud, emotional, and a bit blunt. No one ever expected them to get along, but they became so attached to each other, it was a pain to separate them even for one day.

Reports of Salmonids clustering at the shoreline during high tide got Elliot's parents to be worried about their safety. They were newly divorced, Elliot's father already moving to Inkopolis for a work offer with Elliot himself, and Elliot's mother going to the outskirts of the city.

Chase didn't really know that much about Elliot's parents, and he never really asked either. Elliot never offered, and besides that, their house was the loudest in the entire village. Yelling, screaming, sounds of breaking glass and slamming doors were all too frequent at Elliot's place and Chase became accustomed to having Elliot over for dinner while his parents 'figured themselves out'.

Elia and Marley both tolerated Elliot well while Lillian seemed to favor him over Chase himself. He was more capable of restoring order to Chase's family than Chase ever could, but Chase loved him enough to consider him part of the family anyway, and it was a sad but quick ending when he had to move away two years before Lillian moved out.

And yet, here he was, standing in front of Chase, black apron around his waist and sunglasses and a beret perched on his head. His expression is more monotone than Chase remembers, and that observation is enough to calm him a little for some reason.

But Chase was filled with a weird feeling, something that didn't feel quite right. His body was too heavy, sight too blurry, and his left arm felt like lead. His neck feels stiff and broken at the same time when he tries to move it, but he manages to shift his gaze downward to look at his body.

He has no shirt on, revealing a sickening mess of wires, metal, and screws bolted to his chest and torso, half of it hollowed out so where his stomach used to be, there was an empty gaping hole filled with metal scraps. His left arm had been amputated at the elbow, a grotesque and rusty prosthetic in its place. The rest of his body is bandaged, dried blood crusting on the sides of the bandages. He curls his left hand by instinct and he watches as this  _ thing _ that isn't his hand follow his mental directions. It doesn't feel right. None of this does. 

There's no pain, surprisingly, and he lifts his head to look back up at Elliot, question forming on his lips. His friend answers it before he can even speak. 

"You were half dead after the attack. I salvaged as much as I could but parts of your body were lost beyond repair."

"So you replaced it with this?" Chase gestures to the abomination of his body, eyes wide. "What the fuck did you do to me?"

Elliot continues calmly, as if he hadn't heard what Chase said. "Many of your internal organs no longer worked. I replaced them with mechanical parts, and the rest were gashes and cuts that should heal over time. And your eye--"

Chase lifts his right hand to touch his face. It seems normal enough until his fingers hit something hard. Heart racing, he slowly traces out the pattern of metal around his eye, finally moving inwards to tap his right eye in the center. He sees his own finger come into view, but hears a faint  _ clink _ as the tips of his index finger collides with something flat and cold. He recoils. "What the--"

"I replaced your eye, Chase," Elliot says, coming closer, and Chase instinctively moves away from him the best he can. His damned new parts are too heavy for him to get a proper balance and he almost falls over. Elliot steadies him with one hand, and Chase can see his own reflection in those sunglasses. His right eye is a glowing neon green, a slit of black for his pupil, which darts across the sunglasses' reflection in panic. Pieces of metal are welded to his face, edges tamped down to his skin.

"You replaced my-- of fucking course you did." Chase pulls away from his friend's touch. "You made me into a robot, for fuck's sake. Am I even an Inkling anymore?"

He'd fully expected to have a panic attack by now, but now that he thinks of it, he's not breathing. Does he even need to breath? Didn't Elliot say that his organs were fucked up? What if he didn't even have lungs anymore?

"You are still an Inkling, Chase," Elliot says patiently. "Part of your body is just metal now. Your organs are still there, just replaced by polymer and whatever material I could find to function as stomach and lungs."

Chase shakes his head, listening to  _ something _ in his body clank around as he does so. "So what? I'm like-- I'm like a  _ freak _ now, Elliot. What even made you come back anyway? Your parents finally let you come back twenty minutes too late?"

"That's not very nice," Elliot answers, face blank. "But no. My parents let me go once I was fourteen. I remembered you saying you wanted to go to Inkopolis when you were fourteen so I went back for you. And then--"

"Did anyone else survive?" It's a stupid question, and Chase can see by Elliot's body language that the other wishes he hadn't asked that.

"No. You were close to death, Elia was completely gone, I found Marley torn to shreds near the plaza, and Lillian--"

"She was here?" Chase suddenly feels a thick sense of dread circling the pit of his stomach. "I thought she was in the city."

"She was visiting you, as it looked like." Elliot pushes the bridge of his sunglasses higher on his nose. "Her body was near the shoreline. It looked like she got ambushed while going to meet you."

"And you couldn't fix her?" Chase doesn't know why he's so angry at Elliot. The guy  _ saved _ him for cod's sake, but the thought of his entire family gutted and hung out to dry by Salmonids made him feel things he hoped to never feel again. "You couldn't bring her or Marley, or even try to look for Elia? Or my parents? Or anyone else caught in the ambush? Why me? What made me so fucking special that you had to just keep me alive and not--"

His voice breaks. "And-- and not anyone else?"

"Chase--"

"Don't even say my name, you fucking asshole. Don't bother trying to save me when you just completely disregarded literally everyone else in the entire damned village. I was as messed up as the rest of them, and I bet you didn't bother to say, 'oh, let's check on that bookkeeper down the road to see if they could be saved instead of the friend I stopped talking to years ago.'" He's shaking violently, voice getting louder and higher-pitched. Elliot does nothing to stop him from talking, does nothing except stare at him with those dumb sunglasses and a thin-pressed mouth. "You just-- you just glossed over  _ everyone _ and just  _ had  _ to save me without thinking how I'd feel when I woke and realized my entire family is fucking dead, my entire  _ village _ for cod's sake!"

"I couldn't save them," Elliot says finally and Chase scoffs. His throat feels raw.

"Yeah, you probably didn't even  _ try _ \--"

Elliot's shaking his head now, corners of his mouth tilted slightly downwards. "Chase, you don't get the absolute carnage of that place. Elia was just a smear of blood on the ground with her glasses lying in shatters nearby. Marley wasn't just torn in half; she was strung across the land fence, guts spilling onto the grass outside the house. Lillian was dead and in pieces long before I got to her, part of her body washed away from the tide. You were the first person I came upon who was still breathing so I had to save you before anyone else. It took me a week to salvage your life, and by this time, I doubt anyone else in the village is still alive."

Chase stares at him, unwilling to believe it. His family can't just be gone like that. Lillian couldn't have been going to visit them the moment the Salmonids attacked. He couldn't be sitting here, alive, with half of his body replaced with metal. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't, he  _ couldn't. _

The anger still hasn't settled, as irrational as it is. He feels childish for being upset, and it just worsens his mood.

But it happened already. He's here now, with Elliot, the kid he knows who would never lie, not even if it made things better. Elliot, the dumbass, who didn't know what Chase wanted when stumbling over his body. At this point, Chase just wished his friend left him in the wreckage to die. It'd be so much easier than living like  _ this _ .

"So what? I go out in society like-- like this?" He waves a vague arm at his open torso, replaced eye, prosthetic arm.

"Not like that, no," Elliot replies placatingly. "You'd wear clothes, first of all. And I'm sure we can cover that arm and eye as well."

Chase stares at him disbelievingly, but sighs. "Okay, fine. Whatever."

"Will you be cooperative and find clothes to fit you, then?"

Sometimes, he can't even believe Elliot. Whatever person he had been before he moved away is nothing compared to this. If Chase has the body of a robot, Elliot now has the personality of one. He almost  _ died _ and Elliot was more concerned about clothes than Chase's mental health. If Elliot could be concerned at all, anyway.

"Yeah, just.. give me a minute."

Elliot nods slightly in response and leaves the room, letting Chase to sit among his own thoughts. 

Everything is moving too fast, even for him, the kid who jumped around the village at high speeds, tiring out anyone who came close to him. His whole body feels fine, but that's the creepy part of it. His family, his neighbors, all dead. He's the only one surviving but he barely looks anything close to a functioning Inkling.

But his village... Elliot hadn't gone into detail on what the village looked like itself.

"Elliot?"

His friend appears almost immediately and Chase gestures to the wires dangling from his body. "Can I-- Can I go see what--"

His voice cracks and Elliot's lips ever so slightly curve into a frown. "The village."

"Yeah." He thinks it's best to not talk too much for now.

"If you're sure, then yes. It's not what it used to be."

Chase watches the other leave, suddenly filled with apprehension. 

\--

It takes him a moment to walk, as his body is heavier than normal, and he's not sure if he'll ever get used to it. All thoughts of that, however, disappears as soon as Elliot drives him to the place where he used to live.

His village is completely gone. It was there moments before and now it's just  _ gone _ . No buildings, no houses, the entire place barren and reeking of fish and something else.

Guts, maybe? 

There are bloodstains all over the place, the Salmonids' ink splattered across broken walls and broken bodies, most of which dissolved partially into goo. 

It makes his stomach turn.

Where his house used to be is just a pile of rubble, ink smeared across the table he remembers standing on. He stares at it, as if his body, or pieces of it at least, will suddenly materialize out of thin air. Elia, who should be under the table at the very least, is just a glop of dried blood. He recognizes the bent frame of her glasses, and, trembling, bends down to pick it up. It's still intact, although one lens is missing, the other is still there, albeit scratched and worn. The sticker she put on it after receiving it for her fifth birthday, is still there. It's faded and tapered at the edges; he doesn't know if it'll come off, and he gently lays it back down on the ground. 

Marley's guts, as Elliot had said, are strung across the back fence. He can't bring himself to look at it for more than two seconds as he vomits into the bush and turns away. He doesn't bother looking for identification of her. He doesn't need it.

His room is half gone, the floor caved out near his bed, but most of his things are still there: the shirt Lillian had lent to him before her departure, the same shirt he threw heartlessly into the corner of his room and forgot about. He picks it up now, teeth boring holes into his bottom lip. Her name is still written on the tag, nearly gone with age, but still there. He clenches the shirt in one hand and leaves the room. The photographs of him, his parents, his sisters, his  _ childhood _ are left on the walls. His paints and brushes stay under his closet door. His desk lies untouched. He can't bring himself to take anything else. It feels like a violation of some sacred place, even if it's still his room.

The plaza is ruined, the fountain half demolished, and Chase wonders briefly what Elliot must've thought while coming back here, fully intending to see Chase whole and unbroken. Instead, he came back to the aftermath of a massacre. It makes part of Chase feel terrible for what he said earlier, when Elliot had to experience this on his own, and then bring Chase back to freaking life. The other part is filled with respect for the other. Who in their right mind could see this and come out completely sane?

The shop where he used to buy his paints is overturned completely, the shopkeeper lying at the entrance, disembodied hand still clutching a broom, propped by the doorframe. The bookkeeper is completely gone, melted into a puddle of ink, a trail of blood from which they could've dragged themself before dying blooming over the sidewalk. Ash, from down the road, is draped in pieces over her gardenia bushes, the same ones she spent her lifetime priming. Her blood has collected in the flower petals, most of which strewn about the path to her house. Chase looks at each and every one of them before his hearts squeeze painfully and he moves on.

He resists the urge to follow the shoreline to see if his parents' bodies are there, and instead walks straight into the water, freezing his shins and feet. The feeling of it is comforting, though, not like the strange touch of his now metal body. He finds Lillian's bandanna lying on the ground near a pile of kelp, washed in by the tide. It's sodden and stained permanently dark green, and he lets it drop into the water, watching the waves carry it away. His body feels hollow and empty, and he wants to cry, yet the tears won't come. All of them.  _ Gone _ . He's the only one left. Him, and Elliot, who technically didn't belong here anymore. And maybe Elliot's parents, but they were hardly worth the acknowledgement.

He hears footsteps behind him and Elliot's voice speaks a short distance away, soft and careful. "Chase. It's time to go now."

Chase's breath stutters in his chest; he had no idea he could still breath, but it was there, more alive than he's felt since waking up again, and he turns to face his friend. Elliot is watching him, expression unreadable. Chase stumbles forward, strange weight of his body affecting his stride as he crashes into his friend. The other's arms rise to steady him, pulling him closer. His chest heaves, and finally,  _ finally _ , he lets the tears come, probably soaking Elliot's clothes, but the shorter Inkling doesn't say a word. He just rubs circles into Chase's back, the tide lapping gently around their ankles as the sun rises against the crisp red horizon.


End file.
